Spectacle over burial a low ebb

The days in which alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been lying in a Worcester funeral home, waiting for burial, have not been our finest moments as a country.

During that time — less than a week — we have severely tarnished our commitment to portraying dignity and decency in how we conduct our lives.

Mr. Tsarnaev allegedly killed three people and maimed and injured hundreds in a senseless, twisted, malicious and inhumane spree of violence.

He was allegedly killed with the help of his younger brother and co-conspirator, who police say ran over his brother in Watertown — while fleeing a shoot-out with the police.

When Mr. Tsarnaev’s body was released to his family, common decency dictated that he should be buried with the rites and dignity afforded the dead.

Unfortunately, we caved to the fear that a dead terrorist is still a clear and present danger to who we are as Americans, that he is still not immune from retribution. So, a number of funeral homes refused to take his body. Cambridge, the town in which he lived, doesn’t want him buried there. A number of cemeteries with sections for Muslim burials have also put up the not-welcome sign.

Public officials, meanwhile, have not shown the leadership required in times like these.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Edward Markey and Republican Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez both caved to the fears of those who do not want terrorists to be buried in Massachusetts or on American soil.

Gov. Deval Patrick said the burial was a family issue. He should have gone further. He should have said that if the family chose to have the burial in the state, as a civilized society, that decision should be respected.

And in the absence of any political leadership, we were treated to the despicable scene of protesters decrying and prosecuting one of the few people who have shown decency and dignity in this matter — Peter Stefan of Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors.

Mr. Stefan, whose funeral home has a reputation for serving the poor and destitute, took in the body and allowed the family to prepare it for burial. He is now fervently trying to find a cemetery in which the body can be buried. At the writing of this column, he was still unsuccessful in finding a place.

Sure, the way we are denying Mr. Tsarnaev dignity in death might not be exactly the same way angry Somalis acted when they dragged dead American soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993. But perhaps I should wait, since we haven’t yet pounced on turning the body over to the protesters as an option.

If we value our ideals, Mr. Stefan should be commended, not pilloried. We shouldn’t condemn him for being decent, and we shouldn’t have asked, as Chief Gary Gemme has suggested, that he pick up part of the tab for the security the Worcester Police Department has been providing at his funeral home throughout this ordeal.

Chief Gemme clarified his remarks in an email Tuesday, noting that there are two types of costs — public costs, which “involve security around the funeral parlor,” and private cost, which “is associated with internal security at the funeral parlor.”

“Mr. Peter Stefan made a request for police assistance and agreed to assume some of the costs for police service,” the chief said. “I believe that it is reasonable to expect that Mr. Stefan will honor his agreement to pay the costs for internal security of his property. The Worcester Police Department will incur all other costs.”

But if Mr. Stefan is called on to pay for any of the security costs, such a demand would be another act of persecution against him for doing the right thing and another damning indictment on us as a community.